Why did Istanbul's Internet get the works?

Much of the internet appears to have gone down in Turkey and it is widely believed that the government is doing the throttling.

People in the country are having problems accessing Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter and more. The website Down Detector confirmed problems in the country, particularly in the western parts.

For those who came in late, the Western parts of Turkey are the more educated “western” parts which are more likely to cause the conservative government trouble.

Some have reported that the sites are simply slow, but that it is still possible to access them. Others say they are down entirely.

Turkey Blocks, a website that tracks issues with the internet in Turkey, noted that web traffic including that for WhatsApp was subject to throttling. They were being slowed down to the point where they are unusable. It claimed that the internet ban was related to the arrest of some political activists the night before the outage went into effect.

The centre of the throttling is Turk Telecom. The problem began overnight but has been going on throughout the day, according to local reports.